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George 01/17/2010 3:41:00 AM
Your paper has disgraced itself for my last time after your disrespect for a man that is a TRUE Liberal, not a manufactured liberal image this country and your paper hides behind. Mr. Hentoff is a real American who has promoted real progressive,improvisational jazz as well as a promoter of the truth behind our single political party,the Republicrats. Good luck with your paper and the globalists who control you.
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Geena 01/02/2010 5:28:00 PM
Thank you, thank you very much Mr. Hentoff.
An ardent and longtime fan
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Mary Gordon 10/08/2009 8:20:00 AM
Dear Mr. Hentoff, I came across your columns years ago. I admire you and you honesty. You are refreshing in this world of ours. Thanks Terri
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Christopher Branski 10/04/2009 1:29:00 AM
To say that Nat Hentoff is a hero of mine is to put it lightly. Keep fighting the good fight, Mr Hentoff: America needs you.
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Mindy 08/27/2009 3:47:00 PM
Nat, you were the one who sparked my interest in jazz when I was 14 years old. I'd picked up a book of yours meant for young adults called Does This School Have Capital Punishment. I only knew you from this book so what a delight it was when I was old enough to read the Voice to find that you were one of its stalwarts. Thank you for opening my heart to jazz, for inspiring me to now write my own novel. Know that you have an audience not just in New York but also the rest of the world.
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Erna 07/09/2009 3:43:00 PM
Farewell, Mr. Hentoff! I will miss your column when back in New York this August. What happened to the Village Voice? It's hard to believe that they fired an icon like Nat Hentoff.
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Lisa Zolidis 06/28/2009 11:46:00 PM
I've been reading Nat Hentoff since living 10+ years in New York and for the five years hence after moving out of state. As the Voice has become more and more difficult to read online with the various sorrowful web page changes, I've still made an effort when I could to hunt for Nat Hentoff's column. What a poor, poor choice that the Voice editors cut him from their ranks! Like other news outlets, the Voice must learn that you cannot have substance worth reading without actual news reporters and investigators like Nat. A series of blogs does not cut it.
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James M. Fellers 06/15/2009 5:36:00 PM
In times to come,people will say;"Nat was right." You blow,daddy...
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Phil Lodine 05/27/2009 7:49:00 AM
I was very sorry to hear that you had been "excessed" by the Voice. My own views on many issues are often very dissimilar to yours, but I have always found you worth reading -- whether on jazz, civil liberties or anything else. Your courage in holding principled views without regard to party or popularity is as admirable as it is rare. We'll miss you but hope to hear your voice in other forums -- keep swinging, my friend!
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Andrea Freiboden 05/19/2009 12:31:00 AM
Hentoff was a good guy, a true liberal in the best sense.
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Robert Spain 04/30/2009 8:14:00 PM
Being as conservative as I am, this website is not really my cup of tea but you were always an interesting read, even when I disagreed with you. Writing with a sense of rage is what I will get from you. My great-grandfather was a writer of columns and letters-to-the-editor and I have begun to discover the passion he had and I am working to be clear thinking and accurate like him and you. I hope to find your future writings some where in this vast wasteland of the internet to enjoy. Good Day to you.
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S Freedman 04/04/2009 12:24:00 AM
I have been listening to you and reading your work since the early days in Boston. You are one of the few "solid rocks." Thank you and keep it coming.
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Dan Ludwig 03/28/2009 11:26:00 PM
Nat - I started reading the Village Voice when I was eighteen and primarily because of the listings. But I was attracted to your columns - thier topics and your point of view. At the Rutgers college library I began accessing back issues of the Voice just to read everything you had written that I had missed. Your writng opened a world to me and I had to work hard to understand sometimes just exactly what you were saying. The most difficult thing for me was your objectivity. You never failed to present both sides of the issues equally and that taught me the greatest lesson about the best journalim. I didn't become a lawyer or a writer. I am a high school English teacher and, thanks to you, a better one.
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Larry Hanley 03/03/2009 3:46:00 AM
Nat-
You gave this New York kid a framework in which to understand the meaning of the first amendment and civil rights.
Your mere threat to reveal the MTA firing of an officer of my union in 1988 reversed their decision, saved his job, and emboldened 1200 union members to stand up for their rights.
One can only wonder how many people you have freed to enjoy their American franchise. You are missed.
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Dan_c 02/13/2009 4:14:00 AM
I wonder how Nat feels about threats to restore the so-called 'fairness doctrine'?
Will he rail against it like a good journalist infuriated by it's intent to suppress free speech?
Or will he attempt to justify it, displaying the base hypocrisy most liberal writers are known for?
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lesley 01/30/2009 12:31:00 AM
had asked michael cohen to consider loosing musto and yaeger to keep you. without you vv is purely porn.
and you deserve way better.
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Bruce 01/23/2009 8:29:00 PM
Born and bred here, raised in both of the Villages, West and East, back when they still packed meat in the Fashionable Spending district. I started reading the VV when I was just about thirteen years old, when you could still speak of there being something approximating a geography of ideas, as opposed to a gentrification of the mind, I guess. I read Hentoff.
His departure? Just another nail in the coffin of an idea. Not that ideas are not transitory things. And certainly another strand removed from the warp and woof of the Voice.
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Eric 01/23/2009 1:37:00 AM
The only reason I ever log on to online Voice is to read Nat Hentoff. Now there's no point in logging on to the Voice any longer. In short "The Village Voice" like many other papers is becomming irrelevant. That's why the newspapers are dying they lack the will to inform. I'm not upset with the Voice at all. As Hentoff said at the end of his column . . . "it's like hearing my obituaries while I'm still here." This time he got it wrong. These aren't his obituaries. The obituaries are for the Voice.
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John 01/22/2009 2:08:00 AM
The Voice seems intent on shedding everything that made it great, piece by piece. It's just a rag full of ads and entertainment reviews now. I almost stopped reading it when they dumped Schanberg, but I thought well, there's still Hentoff. Now I won't be able to touch a copy without feeling dirty. The corporate goons who own this rag now have really defamed a once-fine name. Take a bow, assholes.
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A. Stella 01/20/2009 11:52:00 AM
No need to keep the short-sighted Village Voice on my reading list any longer. I will find America's voice of civil liberties -- including the right to life for the imperfect and vulnerable, i.e., all of us reading this -- elsewhere. May Nat Hentoff continue to elucidate and inspire us to action for many years to come.
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philip dziuk 01/19/2009 6:29:00 AM
Nat Henoff
I was interested in your comments relative abortion and euthanasia.I have long thaought that if legistlators and judges and other proponents of abortion would be required to first see an ultrasonogram with the movement and obvious human picture and then help count the fingers and toes and other body parts to be certain that it was all removed they might be less inclined to be active proponents. I am a reproductive physiologist that has done 50+ years of research and teaching on lab and domestic animals.One of the teaching labs involved anesthetizing a pregnant ewe at about 40 days of gestation. We exposed the uterus then the allantoic membranes and the finally the amniotic vesicle containing the live fetus. I asked "What is this?"Is it alive? What is the gender? and a few other questions with obvious answers. Then the final one "If I killed it and macerated it, what would I have done? Again the answer is obvious I have killed a sheep. The students never questioned or suggested that it was a blob of tissue of any other euphemism.This is over a 40 year period and hundreds of students. It was obvious.We need to depict abortion for what it really is , killing another human and a particularly vulnerable one.
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Chuck Zlatkin 01/18/2009 10:54:00 PM
I once was foolish enough to be critical of Nat Hentoff in public. While I thought I was exposing shortsightedness on Mr. Hentoff's take, what I was really doing was exposing how limited my thinking was. Hentoff is a free speech giant. He has educated so many but none more than me. Whatever I have become, I owe a great deal to Nat Hentoff for educating me on the power and viture of our constitutional rights. Keep on keeping on Nat! I will read you anywhere and everywhere.
Peace.
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Joanne Pacicca 01/16/2009 5:50:00 AM
Thank you. Everytime I searched your authorship, and excitment arose...you are the king of truth in journalism! God Bless!
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Lyle Deixler 01/15/2009 8:44:00 AM
I was an intern at the Voice in 1991. One of my jobs, and I was honored to do it, was to proofread Nat's column. I was shocked the first time I walked into his office (when the Voice was just south of Union Square.) As I entered his office I had to stop immediately. At least two dozen, if not more, piles of books, each one waist high and precariously close to the next one, covered the floor. If one tipped over the rest would follow. It was truly bizarre, and incredibly beautiful.
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AbleGoodman 01/15/2009 8:34:00 AM
Nat,
The ONLY reason I bookmarked VV was to read your columns. May I respectfully suggest you buy the domain name nathentoff.com and publish and archive your columns there. That way you would come up first on a Google search without needing any of the skills and BS that go into coming up on the first page of a Google search. Independence on the Web is the name of the game.
In the event you don't know how to create a webpage, I highly recommend pagetutor.com to you. Also, Drupal.com is a very cool open-source (free) content management system. Surely you have a tech-savvy friend who would set up a website for you and teach you how to run it in the event you don't already know how.
All the best to you and yours!
Soldier on.
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Bob 01/10/2009 8:59:00 PM
Thank you, Nat. We'll find you, don't worry. Rage on, man, rage on.
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don 01/10/2009 6:35:00 AM
Hi Nat,
Just finished reading your swan song column and talking with Tom Robbins about your departure. How shameful and petty that they didn't see fit to publish it in the paper of which you were a mainstay (the word is inadequate to the situation -- part of the DNA is more like it) for so many years. You gave the Voice a level of credibility and respectability to which it was otherwise unentitled.
I wish you good health and many more years of shining that clear light of yours where it's needed.
Don Singleton
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Omar 01/10/2009 2:58:00 AM
"Due to budget constraints, blah blah blah...." But why Nat Hentoff? He was one of the best things about the Voice.
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Ken Sisson 01/09/2009 11:42:00 PM
Nat Hentoff leaving?
There goes the only reason to keep reading the Voice.
Nat, you're the best!
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Dolores Garcia 01/09/2009 11:09:00 PM
wow, something has been nagging me to come here and as i sat down to my blog to start typing and quickly noticed how distracting that can be made, i decided to take a moment out and see why i am being pulled to take a look at the voice.
ha, i remember a while back, mentioning a great article of yours to my mother (who i now realize, i have not really even discussed anything in recent years, let alone the fact that i might still read the village voice from her days of) and she said, "my god! nat? is he still there?"
smile. thank you, even if in the earlier days, i bypassed the too intellectual articles for me to vicariously city-hop from jersey and for years after, read them waiting to be able to understand them. that came too late and now that i do, i hope you have no idea how much the younger generations are going to miss you or you wouldn't be writing your last.
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James Graham 01/09/2009 5:01:00 PM
The Voice needs you, Nat, more than you need it. Like Ellington, like Seldes, like all the great saxophonists, you've got plenty more choruses in your horn. Keep playing and we'll all meet down the road a piece.
As for the Voice, they seemed to have lost or dropped something on the way to the toilet. Could be their conscience, could be their brains. Perhaps they'll notice it, perhaps they never will. But the readers already got the picture! See ya later, VV! Many years to come for you, Nat Hentoff.
James Graham Granada, Spain
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Jim Clyne 01/09/2009 8:59:00 AM
I wish our president elect had your balls and intelligence--not to mention good taste.
Enjoy yourself; you've earned it.
And, remember, don't eat the yellow snow.
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ted 01/09/2009 5:50:00 AM
Nat Hentoff used to be a great writer. But now I think he is more interested in being a gadfly than seeking the truth. The way he let himself be used as a mouthpiece for the defamation of Michael Shiavo casts a sad pall on his legacy. Stick to jazz.
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Eric Wiltrout 01/08/2009 10:16:00 PM
Thanks Nat for "shining the light"...you have inspired. Keep the "rage" going...it's still going in me.
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Bill Callahan 01/08/2009 6:15:00 PM
I will miss your column terribly; hopefully the corporate hacks who own this paper will sell to someone with a brain and/or a conscience.
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Teresa Ridley 01/08/2009 10:32:00 AM
And yet another reason to continue reading the Voice is picked off. I was a fan even before Mr. Hentoff took the time in the late '80s to respond to a letter of indignation I'd written regarding a First Amendment issue. I recall fondly his sensible, rational affirmation of my own heated, sputtering outrage. I'd be interested to hear management's justification for eliminating Hentoff's column.
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pork 01/08/2009 8:36:00 AM
:(
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hng 01/08/2009 7:17:00 AM
I used to read Hentoff in The Progressive magazine, I think. Two things: I don't really get his apparent bitterness at being "fired"--he can still write for other pubs if he wants to; second, at 83, doesn't he have better things to do? I'm middle-aged, and after 25 years in the rat race, I'm ready to retire to a warmer climate--and I look forward to never having to answer to some boss (who's usually about half my age).
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D. Kane 01/08/2009 7:12:00 AM
I'm a student and love Mr. Hentoff's work, especially his memoir Boston Boy. It's too bad he must stop his passionately written column, but hopefully it will allow him to refocus his work. Best of luck,
Dan
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Billy 01/08/2009 6:32:00 AM
You're a great man and great American, Nat. Thanks so much for all you've done over the years. Just caught your piece on Dizzy today in the WSJ, so keep writing, Mr. Hentoff, we'll find you.
Keep telling the truth...
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Max Planck 01/08/2009 3:24:00 AM
Thanks for you continuing diligence Nat on both your "jazz" and "civil liberties" beats. As you and your readers well know, both of those areas are sadly underserved and largely ignored by most media outlets and you've done a yeoman's job of reminding us how important they truly are.
I shall continue to pursue your works despite the obvious disdain and disregard exhibited by New Times Media.
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mac brachman 01/08/2009 2:34:00 AM
I'm ambivalent: I don't know whether to use this comment space to praise Nat H. or to excoriate the cow-pie-for-brains who fired him. I'll miss him in the Voice, and there will that much less for me to read in it each week.
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Charles Ferruzza 01/08/2009 12:11:00 AM
I've been reading Nat Hentoff for over 30 years. I discovered the Village Voice in the library of my midwestern college and read it, religiously for years. Nat is a gifted writer and a keen observer of American life. He has been an inspiration to me and always will be.
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Jim Perry 01/07/2009 11:16:00 PM
Thanks, thanks, and thanks for your rare combination of clarity and outrage that stopped perfectly short of being strident. People really don't think through their positions, do they? I know someone who condemns abortion as murder, but was stopped short by the idea that women who get abortions should face murder charges. Makes me think of your column about librarians liking Castro. Think it through!!!!!!!!
Thanks.
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Daniel Buck 01/07/2009 7:48:00 PM
Heartfelt column from a lion of American journalism. The VV just lost its voice.
Daniel Buck
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Damien Murphy 01/07/2009 10:04:00 AM
Go you great and good thing
